In nature, change happens. It is produced by chance. According to rules but only when chance starts it. No one plans it, if you leave God out of the picture. And, evolutionary wise, change ‘remains’ if it doesn’t bother too much. If the individual things/organisms affected by change are able to survive. Please note that if ‘dramatic’ enough, change may ‘alter’ everything. A star changes constantly but at some point it will become a nova. Or even a supernova. Which event will change everything around it…
In a social setting, things are a tad more complicated. Change, social change, is initiated. By individuals. Not necessarily according to a plan and almost always ignoring the end results. But it is always initiated by somebody. And is allowed to stay. Or not… By those experiencing the consequences. According to what they make of it. Again, even in the social setting there are rules. Just as in nature. But while the natural rules are enforced by nature itself, the social rules need to be enforced. By people. By those who end up experiencing the consequences of the afore mentioned rules being enforced properly. Or not…
What am I babbling about?
You’re not comfortable with a bragging pussy-grabber signing presidential orders in the Oval Office? How comfortable were you when Clinton got away with “I did not have sexual relations with that woman!“ You’re not comfortable when ‘US national-security leaders’ establish a private group on a social network to share sensitive data? How comfortable were you when a Secretary of State had established a private e-mail server to handle official messages? And got away with it…
I’m convinced Putin still believes he might get away with it. With whatever he wishes to accomplish…
Why? Because he is convinced that the only thing which might prevent him from achieving his goal is ‘the West’. You see, he is adamant that without the ‘western influence’ he would have imposed his will upon Ukraine a very long time ago. After all, he’d already done that in Russia, didn’t he? And the West seems to be loosing its focus….
A lot of ‘distraction’. Trump is indicted on 37 counts, mainly for mishandling highly sensitive information, while Boris Johnson quits his MP chair claiming he is the victim. ‘I did mislead the Commons but I didn’t do it on purpose’.
According to Putin’s book, there’s no difference between him and these two guys. All three of them have nothing in their mind but their own interest. In this respect, Putin is absolutely right. What he fails to realize is that Trump being indicted and Johnson being investigated by the Commons are signs of strength. The US and Britain, respectively, seem to have came back to their senses. And started cleaning up their act.
He, Putin, also fails to realize that the Western help might come in handy. For the Ukrainians. But what keeps them fighting is their will. Their quest for freedom!
The very same thing had happened during WWII. The West did carry huge amounts of weaponry to the former USSR. Which weapons had helped the Red Army resist – and then defeat – Hitler’s attempt to enlarge the German Lebensraum. But without the ordinary Russians putting up with the war… all western help would have been lost! Same thing is happening under our own eyes. The arms beefing up Ukraine’s army might come in handy but it’s the Ukrainian determination to lead their own, independent, life which will eventually douse Putin’s ambition.
One final thing. Nazi Germany had ultimately failed because it was an ‘imperium’. A socio-political arrangement where all decisions were made in a highly centralized manner. Where mistakes accumulated and eventually made it impossible for the arrangement to survive. Because unsolved past mistakes make it impossible for a system to evolve. To solve present day challenges.
Any resemblance to what’s going on in present day Russia is nothing but yet another proof that failing to understand history forces you to repeat the lesson.
Nothing special inside but it illustrates well enough the point I’m trying to make.
At first, Putin’s words are summarized and then proven ‘wrong’. Misleading. Or plain false. In the next section of the article, the author – Paul Kirby, like many more before him, attempts to divine what Putin will do. Starting from the same words which have just been proven false and/or misleading.
?!?
No, the author is not ‘dense’. He simply does what he was trained to do.
We, here in the land of democracy, understand language as a medium for negotiation. And negotiation as an exchange where we let our needs be known, in earnest. As an exchange where we ‘trade’ information with the goal of finding the best mutually acceptable solution for whatever problem we attempt to solve. In this sense, a negotiation is a form of cooperation. And compromise is something which both sides find beneficial.
For people conversant in ‘dictatorian’, ‘compromise’ is something to be shoved down the throat of the weaker side. The bigger the power differential, the harder to swallow becomes the ‘compromise’.
Doesn’t make much sense? To us, democrats? Because we know that shoving things down the throat of now weaker people doesn’t work on the longer time frame?
‘Assuming’ is the worst thing a negotiator may make.
We keep assuming that dictators are rational. Even worse, that they follow the same ‘ratio’ as we do. That we – as in we and them, see the same world and have ‘slightly’ different goals. And express those different goals in the same manner. Using the same kind of language.
We are wrong.
We, the democratically minded, are trained – conditioned is a truer word, to consider ‘the other’ as being equivalent to us. At least some of the others, but that’s another discussion. We actually ‘know’, in our bones, that we cannot ‘do’ anything by ourselves. That we exist only in cooperation with those around us. That everything we have ever accomplished was the result of a common effort.
People conditioned in dictatorial regimes see things rather differently. They don’t cooperate, they just obey. Their existence does not stem from the common effort but from following orders. Language is not at all a medium where information is being passed between equivalent agents but a two way conduit. Orders are flowing from top to bottom and acknowledgments crawl from bottom to the top.
‘And what about ‘information’?!? How does it travel among those people?’
Piecemeal. Exclusively on a ‘need to know’ basis. Nobody ‘volunteers’ any information unless expressly asked about it by a superior.
This is why dictatorships end up crumbling under their own weight.
That’s why we don’t understand, for real, what Putin attempts to communicate. That’s why he is extremely annoyed right know.
Putin no longer understands what’s going on. Let aside the fact that nobody around him dares to volunteer any information – which would be contrary to what Putin wants to hear. My point being that Putin had been accustomed to having his way.
I’m not going to enumerate all the things he had done. Things we should have reacted against… As in ‘reacted’, not meowed meekly. As a consequence, he had grown accustomed to shoving things down our throats…
Suddenly, we have stopped swallowing! Without giving him a ‘reasonable’ reason… A reason he could understand!
Do you remember what I’ve told you? A few moments ago? That dictators don’t care about those who are weaker? Nor about the long term consequences of their decisions? That dictators are concerned exclusively with their own survival?
What I think of you and what you are in reality are two different things. But this is another kettle of fish.
A ‘different’ kettle of fish, you mean.
Have it your way. But you have to take into consideration that the kettle itself remains the same. Only the fish inside are different, one catch at a time. Even when the fish belong to the same species, are of the same size and you take the pain to add the same number of fish to the kettle. Let’s go back to Solomon splitting babies. The ‘official’ story, the one presently belonging to the “Hebrew lore” and “recorded at 1 Kings 3:16-18“, had been redacted. From what had actually happened:
As we all know, Solomon had many wives. An a few concubines. 700 and 300, respectively. In these circumstances, he rarely had a full night’s sleep. No wonder that whenever he had to make a judgment, specially early in the morning, he used to send for his trusted personal advisor. When the two women, both pretending to be the mother of the disputed child, had come to seek justice before king Solomon, he was rather sleepy. But the faithful – and very discreet, ‘coach’ was there. As always. The first woman was asked to tell her side of the story. Solomon, at some point, waived his hand. ‘Enough, you seem convincing enough. Take your baby and scram’. ‘But sir, shouldn’t you also listen what the other woman has to say? Before deciding the fate of the poor baby?’ whispered the adviser in Solomon’s ear? ‘Wait. Come back, both of you! Now, the other one, what’s your story?’ ‘….’ ‘You’re also very convincing… you have the child…’ ‘But sir, they cannot both be right! At the same time… There’s only one child…’ Solomon, suddenly awaken, turns back to face the counselor: ‘You are absolutely right too!’ And only then, after realizing that sometimes – when there’s only one child to be had, for example – two people cannot entertain two different opinions and be right at the same time, Solomon did put his mind to work. In earnest. And came up with his famous solution. “Split the child!”
Same thing here. Both J.P. Morgan and Friedrich Nietzsche had been partially right. There is a difference between ‘real’ – a.k.a. ‘golden’, and fiat money but the difference is made by us!
See, no need to split the child. Not this time, anyway. But we have to keep in mind that, no matter what any of us thinks, for money to retain their value – no matter whether those money are ‘real’ or ‘fiat’, we need to be able to make good use of those money.
A heap of gold and a suitcase of dollars are equally useless if there’s nothing to be bought!
In the context of Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial, a friend asked me ‘which right takes precedence?’
A ‘right’ can be understood in two ways.
As something granted to somebody by somebody else. Or as a consequence of modus vivendi. A consequence of how people interact among themselves.
People who see it in the first way, will ‘fight’ to establish that ‘precedence’.
Those who understand rights as being a consequence of social evolution will negotiate among themselves about the order in which rights should be exerted.
Hence my assertion. No guns should be present at a ‘peaceful’ manifestation. Where people come to manifest their grievances. Where a car or two might get torched. Where a window or two might get smashed. But where – if things go as ‘planed’, nobody will loose more than a couple of teeth. No matter what!
But as soon as guns are brought along, the ‘atmosphere’ is changed. People start loosing their lives. And while a car, or a window, can be replaced… lost life cannot be brought back!
And for me, life takes precedence over property. I would aim a gun – If I had one, at somebody trespassing through my bedroom but I would not shoot at them unless my – or others, life was in danger.
So yes, Rittenhouse was right to defend himself but he shouldn’t have brought that rifle to a manifestation. No matter how riotous. It wasn’t his job to police the town. A town which wasn’t his home, where he owned no property… but where he eventually had taken two lives while ‘protecting property’. While asserting “his right to bear arms“.
For whatever reasons, vaccine arrived later in some countries. For whatever other reasons, some people had chosen to ‘opt out’ in those countries where the vaccine had been plentiful.
The market had become free. Free for more and more people to search for new ways to meet their needs. This freedom had allowed the market to become efficient enough for more and more people to be able to satisfy some of their wishes, on top of most of their needs.
Agora had become free. So free that politicians had to solve more and more of the real problems encountered by the society at large. Life had become so free that states had become prosperous.
And more and more of the people were happy!
Now, the market is so free that more and more people have started to search for ‘really’ new ways to meet their wishes. Eventually, they came to be known as ‘financial engineers’. The market is no longer the place where people meet to satisfy their needs but the place where some of them accrue huge sums of money while more and more of the rest find it harder and harder to survive.
The Agora is also at its freest. ‘Political marketeers’ have taken over from the ‘the old school’ – and ‘real’ politics have been replaced with ‘give the people what they want’. Political life is no longer about solving problems. It has become a relentless quest for power. Keeping things ‘afloat’ is no longer THE goal, only a cost.
Is this sustainable?
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As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated! Another very efficient way to help would be to share my posts.
As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
A story opens a space. An explanation sets limits.
A story empowers. An explanation tells how those powers are to be used.
Neither are true. Each wants to be true but neither will ever reach the exact place. ‘Bull’s eyes’ are safe. We keep trying, although those of us who know their way around words are aware how elusive truth is.
The downside of the whole thing being that words, ‘storied’ words, might kill. As in actually! And uselessly…
Unless accompanied by a valid explanation, of course.
One of those books which function as a magnifying mirror. The older you get – and the more mistakes you’ve made, the less you like of what you see when facing it.
One of my high-school mates had emigrated to Canada. From Romania. He’s been living there for 25 years now. We keep in touch. A few years ago, he told me:
“We come from their future. I currently experience things which had already happened in Romania.”
His prophecy had been fulfilled, and then some, yesterday. The sixth of January, 2021.
1991, Romanian miners occupying the Romanian Parliament.
The differences between the two instances exist and they are not insignificant.
Both Trump and Iliescu – the Romanian president at that time, had been democratically elected. Both on populist platforms, even if the concept wasn’t as widely used in 1991 as it is now.
Only 1991 wasn’t the first time the miners had come to Bucharest. In 1990 Ion Iliescu – the ‘cripto’ communist leader who had risen to power as a consequence of the 1989 uprising, had ‘thanked’ the miners for quelling a ‘festering’ anti neo-communist protest organized mainly by students. In fact, this had been yet another precedent. ‘Occupy’ Piata Universitatii 1990 versus Occupy ‘Everything’ 2011. In 1991, the miners had, again, ‘occupied’ Bucharest. Again, ‘supposedly’, under their own volition. The then prime minister, Petre Roman, had adopted some very stringent free market reforms. Which had fallen foul of both Iliescu and certain swaths of the population. Hence the miners had not been driven back to Valea Jiului until Petre Roman had been revoked from office.
And 1991 wasn’t the last time the miners had attempted to make themselves noticed… As the old saying goes, it’s harder to quiet down a hornet’s nest than to stir it up!
nicichiarasa 